


petrichor

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Gore, Possession, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22197772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: In which there is a ghost.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 54





	petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> this fic happened because of one scene I wanted to write and then it just kept going, oops. thanks to the discord for letting me ramble about this

\------

Aloysius Fogg leaves town, Amos Kinsley is buried, the dead do not rise, and life goes on.

-

The church is no longer a burnt out husk, gold and connections go a long way. The Reverend does some of the work himself, cleaning the oil and stripping those floorboards as best he can. Arabella and Miriam prove to be able helpers, mostly for their ability to procure deeply alarming alchemical solutions to clean with. 

He didn’t think wood could turn that color.

\--

Matthew gets a proper gravemarker made for Amos Kinsley. It’s frustratingly simple, a name and a death date. Anything else feels like a lie, they know nothing of his family, his age-they know nothing but that he was brave, and was their friend. 

The funeral is himself, Arabella, Miriam, and Miss Katy from the Bella Union. Aloysius Fogg left town, face still empty, and some part of him worries about that.

(matthew keeps the colts, hands steady as he cleans them)

\--

Arabella’s fiction of helping at the church slowly becomes a reality, when she and Miriam aren’t out and about doing things Matthew is slightly frightened to ask about after the third time they came back smelling like gunpowder and dynamite. 

-

“You were in the cavalry,” Arabella says one quiet evening and Matthew blinks up at her, pen still in its well.

“Teach me how to ride,” She continues, and it’s not quite a request. He thinks _I know sidesaddle, and how to look pretty for pictures,_ thinks of hands clawing in the rough dirt, thinks of nervous glee and a scalpel, thinks of a steady hand around a gun. 

“Alright,” he replies. 

\--

The snows are heavy this year, but not deadly. Arabella, southern darling that she is, is deeply irate at the world until shown some tricks by both Miriam and Matthew. 

Life slows in some ways and picks up in others, most folk preferring to stay in the warmth of buildings rather than panning in icy rivers. The saloons are doing well, and more folk even show up to his sermons, if only for something to do.

\--

The church is empty, final straggler from the sermons having left near an hour ago. The congregation for Deadwood is small, but steadily growing. Some came from faith, some from habit, some from curiosity. Arabella doesn’t think the Reverend minded, as long as they came. She’s helping tidy up what little mess there is, the floorboards are mostly replaced but dirt gets tracked in the same as any other building, holy or not. The Reverend is resetting a few pews, apparently dissatisfied with the current arrangement. 

Someone must've had trouble with the set up, she thinks. The Reverend notices things like that. She means to ask him if he needs help.

“Do you have any siblings?” is what leaves her mouth instead. She feels them land like lead weights, in how rigid he goes. 

“I’m sorry, Matthew, please ignore that.” The name is still awkward on her tongue even weeks after he’d asked her, quietly, to call him that.

“...I did,” he replies anyway, after a pause. He must see how her heart drops because he hurriedly continues, “I only meant in that I haven’t seen them in-” He pauses again, searching her face. For what she doesn’t know.

“I left rather more than just a rank, when I left the cavalry,” he finishes. 

“Oh,” She says, feeling foolish. He’d told them he’d deserted, that terrible night. Deserters were hung, he couldn’t keep his name. Keep his family.

“Do not worry for me, I wasn’t particularly close, I was something of a black sheep,” his lips twist slightly, “of the family.” 

Arabella blinks at him.

“My father wasn’t my mother’s husband,” the Reverend clarifies. He doesn’t look ashamed, per say, simply slightly awkward but Arabella feels mortified for bringing up the topic all the same. 

“It’s only that you seem practiced at looking after people, my sister-” She cuts herself off. Her knuckles are white around the broom handle.

“Tell me about her?” Matthew asks, sitting on a pew. Arabella looks at him, and sees nothing but genuine curiosity on his face. 

“She used to call me Bells, Hells Bells when she was mad,” she begins.

\--

Matthew asks, once, if she wanted her husband gone. Arabella looked at him for a long moment in reply, an unreadable expression on her face.

"Not yet," is all she says.

\--

Roche serves chaos.

His gods need it, they feast upon the fear certain kinds of chaos result in. To this end, he has been given power, power to summon fire, plagues-even to call upon demons.

He has heard tell of the preacher in Deadwood, who speaks so firmly of love and light that it’s becoming a little bastion of hope, and his lords can’t have that. The fear in this region had been so powerful until recently.

So, the solution he designs is quite genius, if he does say so himself. Simple too. Just invite one of the many little demonic spirits from the other side of the veil into the priest, and let it go.

This has worked very well for him in the past, though usually in smaller towns. It’s more enjoyable when the priest has a more longstanding presence, there’s a more ...refined sense of betrayal, that way. 

Oh well. 

He sets up some havoc to distract from the church in the dead of night. The priest’s windows are still alight, which is perfect. It’s already empty, of course, but fires are fun to set and the less attention on the church the better. The spell merely requires some chalk on the floor, most of it new and easy to draw on, and a way to get the priest in the circle. Roche sets the circle just inside the door, and makes just enough noise. 

-

“Who’s there?”

Matthew takes two quick steps into the church, hand drifting to the small of his back when he sees the figure standing in the aisle-

And the world lights up blue.

-

He knows it works because the priest staggers a bit, blinking suddenly nearly colorless blue eyes. Roche is slightly disappointed, and hopes the demon learns to hide its eyes at speed because that’ll be a dead giveaway, so different from the priest’s dark eyes.

The demon he has placed in the priest is looking down at its hands and flexing them. 

“Now, demon, go forth and wreak hav-”

“You did this," the demon says. The affect is too flat to be a question. He frowns at it.

“Of course, now-”

The demon steps out of the circle. Towards him.

-

Matthew wakes up in his bed, a half remembered dream of an intruder in the church clinging to the edges of his mind. He aches, just a bit, but he fell asleep in an odd position and he’s not as young as he used to be.

It turns out he slept through some havoc last night, someone had set fire to a building at the other end of town last night. No one had died, the damp wood from a recent snowfall never let the conflagration get too large. 

He offers up a prayer of thanks, and gets along with his day.

(if there’s a few new dark spots on the dark wood floor and a strange smell well-he still has some issues with the oil on occasion, and the wind will send the smell of the pigs to the church some days. he doesn’t think much of it)

\--

“What on earth did you say to Thomas, anyway?” Arabella asks from where she’s sprawled unladylike across his sofa, squinting at one of her growing collection of occult novels. The books tend to live at his place for reasons she hasn’t properly explained, but Matthew isn’t arguing.

“What did I say to who?” Matthew replies, dragged from his budget book. 

“What did you say to Thomas Reyes? I haven’t seen boy tip his hat a day in his life but he offered to help me across the street today.”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Matthew replies reflexively, like he has every time Arabella asks about such things. He thinks the woman needs information and mysteries like most folks need air and water. 

She pouts a bit at him then returns to her books, and he’s pleased to let it go because he as no memory of talking to Thomas Reyes, much less a conversation that’d get a hard headed brat of a teenage boy to show some politeness. He almost asks if she was sure it was himself that Thomas had spoken to but. 

He shakes it off and goes back to his budget book. 

\-- 

Matthew will never admit it but it actually takes a few instances (less than a dozen, he’ll reason later, it’s fine if it’s less than a dozen) for him to realize he’s losing time. He’s always been prone to getting-lost in thought, his mother called it. 

Daydreamer, she’d say affectionately. Empty-headed, her husband would counter. 

This was one of the first things he’d tried to strip out of himself, after. Other things went easily enough but this tendency stuck around, despite all. 

(he wasn’t even really thinking that much, he’d tried to explain when he was young and thought people still listened, the world and time just would slip away unnoticed, thread unspooling through numb fingers)

So when he comes to and the dishes are washed he thinks little of it. So when he comes to and he’s standing outside by the firewood he thinks little of it. So when he comes to and the stew is mostly done when he’d just been chopping vegetables he thinks little of it. 

It’s only when it becomes hours that slide away into yawning nothingness, only when he doesn’t recall entire conversations, only when he starts to feel something _other_ in his head-

That’s when he starts to think.

To worry. 

-

(he starts wrapping his rosary around his wrist, thumb ticking back and forth over the back of the crucifix, always against bare skin and he’s not burning so it’s fine, it’s just a bit warm because it’s warmed by his skin it’s fine, he’s not burning and the holy water for service is fine. it doesn’t hurt it’s fine the lingering doubts that he’s real enough a priest that could bless things enough are easily quieted it’s _fine_ )

Whatever might be in him hasn’t hurt anyone, hasn’t tried to as far as he knows and that’s better than he’s managed. Hasn’t even hurt him, it’s done the _dishes_ for God’s sake-

It’s fine. 

\--

There’s gunfire in the street of Deadwood. 

This happens often enough that he rarely startles anymore but this time he blinks and he’s behind cover and his heart is rabbiting in his chest-

And he’s holding a Colt pistol in his hand.

\--

By God's grace he is alone the first time he feels the other fully. He's in his rooms, scribbling and scratching out ideas for his next sermon, absently flipping through the pages of his Bible.

He pauses, because there's the sensation of prickling, like the sensation of being watched but it's from behind his own eyes and all his skin starts to buzz and he watches his own hand lift from the page and set the pen in its inkwell and gently close the Bible and he can feel everything start to fall away and he forces numb lips and tongue to cooperate-

"Hello?"

Which is the stupidest possible thing to say why did he-

The thing puppeting his body freezes, and he can feel his eyes go wide. The feeling of falling into nothingness has ceased, leaving the deeply uncomfortable sensation of being a passenger in his own flesh and bone. 

The thing sets his hands down on the desk, like it's not sure what to do with them.

"Hello, Reverend," the thing-the demon? replies, sounding oddly awkward. The voice he hears is his own but there's an echo in his own mind of someone else's voice. 

It sounds familiar but he can't quite-

"Didn't mean to muck up your evening none-” 

(a dark figure with twin guns and a crooked smile)

“Clayton?!" Matthew gasps, or tries to, the exclamation rattling around his skull instead of leaping from his tongue. 

A sense of greeting rolls through him, catching heavy around his throat and the world slides away.

\--

(he dreams this time, of strange landscapes and pale eyes. he is not afraid, in the dream. his rosary dangles from his hand, glowing softly in the dark and keeping the distant shadows at bay. his Lord protects him here.

something behind him shifts, and he smiles.

his friend protects him here)

Matthew wakes up sitting at his desk, head resting on crossed arms. His notes have been neatly stacked off to the side, and the inkwell has been capped. 

\--

(before)

Clayton isn’t sure what was going on. The world is blurry and dark like a nightmare desert and empty buildings rotting into the sky, panels hanging midair. He thinks he’s been here for a while. There’s other beings here. They’re not people (he might not be a person). Just dark shapes wandering endlessly through the space. 

He wanders too. 

There are no reflections here, just shapes and shadows and the dull, watery light of a hidden moon. 

He can see what might be the living, sometimes, and he starts to recognize buildings. A saloon, a hotel, a stable. 

A church. 

He stays around there the most, he’s seen several of His people there when the world thins out and he can see. 

(one is missing and he’s not sure if he likes that cause that one hurt him but-)

Then there’s a call. It’s a siren song, and it’s coming from his church and there is a doorway and he sees the others, who are nothing but drooling mouths and grasping claws and he can see one of His on the other side of the doorway. If the others go through they will be near one of His, might hurt one of His and that was-no. No. 

So he lunges first (and if he’s also little more than teeth and claws that’s fine he moves faster that way) and then there’s light and _heaviness_ and he’s looking at familiar hands from an unfamiliar angle. 

He looks up. 

The man who would have brought harm one of His is talking. He won’t be for very long. 

The Reverend has big, strong hands, but he doesn’t want to mar them. So he flexes and reaches and it’s spectral claws that slice through the belly of the enemy before him. The man crumples with a guttural scream, intestines spilling out like rope off a ledge to land on the ground with a wet thwack. The man is still alive, writhing in time with his twitching guts and screaming still, thick with blood and bile. It’s very loud, and Clayton doesn’t want someone to show up. 

The spectral claws twist and reform and he’s holding one of his pistols instead. He’s standing over the man now, careful to keep the Reverend’s boots free from blood. He fires.

The screams cut off with another wet splatter of blood and brains. The gunshot was silent, and the church is blessedly quiet. He looks around, nose wrinkling at the chalk marked on the floor, near invisible on the dark boards and under all the blood and viscera. 

Cleaning this up is gonna be a bitch and a half.

(and matthew wakes up the next day aching, from a strange dream about an intruder in the church. there’s nothing there when he looks, of course, though the stench from the pigs is strong today)

\--

(after)

Matthew tries to talk to the ghost in his head, after it leaves him sitting at his desk. 

It’s foolish of him, God knows if this is even truly the man he knew, or what time as a specter has done to his mental state. 

He’s never been lauded as a particularly cautious man, though, so he proceeds regardless.

-

“Will you not speak to me, Amos Kinsley?” he asks, frustration getting the better of him after several days of what he can only call stubborn silence. The sudden agonized betrayal that spikes through his chest only to cool into a dull resignation leaves Matthew shaking.

He never uses that name again.

\--

“Why did you keep them?” his own voice whispers, as Matthew cleans the Colts. He doesn’t pause in his work, despite feeling Clayton like someone leaning over his shoulder. He does not look. 

(there’s nothing to see)

“Wanted to keep some of you around,” he replies. The weight around his shoulders gets heavier for a moment. Then it’s like someone gently taps the back of his hands, asking permission. 

Clayton finishes cleaning the Colts. 

\--

(they begin to speak at night, after the last of evening prayer has finished fading in the air. trading audible voice back and forth and whispering the rest in their minds. topics range from silly to serious, coffee preferences to why clayton slept with a chair against the door and where the scar on matthew's face came from.

it's a little funny, matthew thinks, to learn so much about a man after he's dead)

\--

“Why on earth do you hold sermons so early if you hate mornings?” Arabella asks from the stove where she’s making coffee. 

The Reverend just grumbles wordlessly from the table, not lifting his face from his crossed arms.

The dawn light is only just starting to filter through the clouds, and the Reverend was still half asleep. He was perfectly capable of making his own coffee, but Arabella had to make it herself if she wanted to be able to drink something that wouldn’t pass for tar.

He claimed it was a relic from his cavalry days, she just thought he wasn’t awake enough to taste it. 

Arabella plunks one of the tin cups next to his arms, settling herself across from him. “Coffee’s up,” she prompts, knowing he’d fall right on back asleep if he kept slumped over like that.

“Thank you kindly,” Matthew mumbles, lifting his head to squint blearily at her. With pale blue eyes. 

Arabella has never been happier about her family training her ability to keep a composed face no matter what, and that she still had her gloves on to hide how her fingers go white around her cup. 

The thing across from her just sits up, clutching the coffee to it. Then it blinks, and Matthew’s brown eyes are back, and it looks back up at her and she only barely catches the slight start it gives seeing her.

“Ah, sorry, slow this morning, what were you saying?” 

“Nothing much,” Arabella says, keeping a pleasant expression on her face, “Only that you’re going to be late at this rate.”

Not-Matthew glances at the clock and nearly topples out of its chair with a yelp. 

“Yes thank you for the coffee Arabella, see you aftertheservice-” and it’s out the door. 

Arabella stares frozen at the closed door for a long moment. Then she lunges for her books. 

\--

Matthew wakes up tied to a chair.

It says something about his life that this is not the first time this has happened to him.

(still terrified and running and too young and stupid to know how far bounties can go, too sharp edged to play harmless, not yet with a collar of God worn around a neck that will see more than one noose)

He’s in his own damn rooms, the rope isn’t especially tight, and as he shifts to see if he can get loose he glances down.

There’s symbols sketched in chalk in a circle around him.

Matthew feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Before he can try to work himself free he hears footsteps and Arabella circles around from behind him. 

“What have you done with the Reverend?”

-

“The monster pretending to be Matthew just stares at her, wide eyed. Its eyes are still brown, and she feels a little ill about how well it’s faking. 

“What?”

-

Confusion and betrayal tastes like bile at the back of his throat, and Clayton’s _terror resignation again always again_ manifests in rigid muscles and a pit in his gut. 

Arabella is composed the same way he’s seen her composed when speaking of her sister’s death, when she’s spoken of her family, when she’s spoken of her husband. 

“Arabella, it’s me,” he starts and then freezes. 

The press of a gun barrel against the back on one’s skull is a very distinct feeling. 

“She asked you a question,” Miriam says from behind him. 

The world slides away. 

-

When the thing goes still and blinks and pale blue eyes stare back at her Arabella feels the shred of hope she had wither. 

(she wanted to be wrong, she wanted so badly for his eyes to have been the product of an overtired mine but there had been too many things tallying up and how had she not noticed before now, how long had it been-)

“Where is he?” she repeats, and her voice does not shake. Miriam is white lipped and cold, rifle still aimed at the back of the thing’s head.

“Right here,” the thing says, and its inflections are all wrong, drawl more southern than Matthew’s has ever been. 

“So possession, then. A demon?” Arabella says, clipped and flat and already reaching for the sage. 

“I don’t rightly know,” says the demon, and it sounds resigned, of all things. The answer actually gives both the women pause.

“I beg your pardon,” Miriam says flatly.

The expression of immense longsuffering paired with blue eyes and something about how the lantern’s shadow doesn’t quite catch the top of his face-

“Clayton?”

\--

Matthew wakes up to a hug.

He’s sitting on the sofa now, and his face is pressed against silky purple cloth. Miriam is hugging him, he realizes, thoughts oddly sluggish, standing and curled over him, arms around his shoulders and face pressed against her stomach. His own arms are pinned against his chest like he hadn’t known what to do with them.

“What-” he mumbles, and feels Miriam’s arms tighten around him.

“You’re back.”

“Yes, what-” he pushes away (gentle gentle always gentle), “what happened-” and he is flinging himself inward because there was a circle and Arabella knew things and where is Clayton-

 _soft dark twin gleam of pistols anchor_ meets his flailing. Matthew’s breath shudders out of him, and he looks up at Miriam and Arabella. 

"Thank you," he (they) say. 

\--

There is a ghost who lives in the priest of Deadwood.

Sometimes it even has blue eyes.

\---

Later, there will be a man dressed in black asleep on the church’s porch, hat tipped over his face. 

There will be a woman who walks up to him, trailed by another man in black. The woman wanders up to the sleeping man, and jabs him in the side. The man will grunt, and lift up his hat to blink at her with mismatched blue and brown eyes. 

Which will go very wide when he sees the other man, whose collar is still starched bright white, hovering awkwardly behind her. 

You forgot, didn’t you, the woman will say.

We thought he was supposed to be here Tuesday, the man will reply, scrambling to his feet.

Two minds between you and neither of you can keep a schedule in your head, the woman will tease, red hair bright under her hat.

It’s a man with two brown eyes that holds out a hand to the baffled travelling priest. 

Reverend Mason, pleased to meet you, the man will say. 

\--

Life goes on.

\---------------------


End file.
